Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
Arriving in the Base, a truck with a load of vegetables goes onto a weighbridge to get weighed. After dumping the cargo they weigh the vehicle once again; the difference between the loaded and empty truck shows the weight of the brought vegetables if only the weighbridge works correctly. That's where arises the need for a trained calibrator who knows how to tune the weighbridge. To do the calibration, you also need a trial one-ton load of 20 kg pig iron weighs, as well as some workforce to move that ton from one corner of the weighbridge to another, to another, to another, to the middle…
The job of hands at calibration disclosed who of us was who. At first, it was like a sporting event, we carried the weighs racing ahead each other, by the third corner we started to notice which of us shirked and who was going to the end…
Then for two or three days, we cleaned the potato storage block of its stock gone rotten in winter. I never imagined there could be so sickening a stench in the world. Wrapping our mugs in our tank tops, we dragged that horrid muck out, in two-handle wicker baskets, to dump in the thicket of tall grass on the Vegetable Base outskirts. The number of working school guys diminished to 5…
The main workforce at the Base were women in black robes and pattern-printed kerchiefs on their hair. They sorted the carrots or beetroots in the respective blocks, and we moved and stacked the boxes filled by them. Sitting in a circle around a dusty knoll of vegetables, they never stopped yakking, not for half a minute, faith. They were telling each other endless sagas of "he" and "she". About how that "she" of theirs grew fat, then skinny, then got to the hospital, then told her mother she couldn't live without him, then died, then cheated on him and fled with someone else… And "he" was tall, then short, then pot-bellied, then bald, then black-haired, then a drunk; "he" refused to pay alimony and asked to marry him, they treated him for alcoholism before “he” ripped off the linoleum from the kitchen floor to take it to his lover widowed two times…
And so they would pour out their chin music until the blonde guy from School 14, Long by his handle, addresses the peppiest one in the circle of squaws seated on the upset empty boxes, "Well, you give or what?"
"At once!" says she. "But when in I'll squeeze and tear your little willie clean off you, kiss it goodbye, lover!"
And the lady-squaws would start to silence her by oops and pfffs and "watch your mouth! It's a kid you talkest to!"
For the midday meal, I rode home – 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, 10 minutes for soup and tea or, maybe, compote.
Thus, 4 times a day I gained the first space velocity pedaling all the way down the concrete dive into the Under-Overpass tunnel. Who, of the Vegetable Base hands, does not crave for crazy speed? Whee-hoo!.
Each morning Head of the Vegetable Base was allocating jobs for the present workforce. A couple of times I got a coopers' helper job. The area in front of their stocky workshop was crowded with hogsheads in need of repair. I rolled or dragged the vessels in, depending on their current condition. Two mujiks in caps and aprons knocked the iron hoops off, and the barrel fell apart turning into a heap of slightly bent staves which they called klepkas. The coopers sorted them, threw the hopeless off, and filled up for the shortage from the stock of odd klepkas. They planed and fitted them to each other, collected flat round bottoms from straight lags to insert them on both ends of the resurrected barrel and drive the hoops back.
Of course, I knew that when saying "a klepka’s missing in his head" folks meant the same as when they said "not all at home" or just "crazy", but it was in that workshop that I got it where that meaning came from – you cannot fill a barrel with a missing klepka, it's as impossible as filling a cup whose walls are crazed.
The refuse I hauled to the same idle stoves in the yard with the iron cauldrons embedded in them. The coopers worked unhurriedly, fixing two or three barrels a day, and the time by their side passed so very slowly, but in their workshop, there was a pleasant smell of timber shavings…
By the masons, it smelled of damp earth. They worked in a long basement bunker, replacing a log wall with a brick one. And they also wore caps and aprons; the caps were the same as on the coopers, but the aprons of a sturdier tarp.
I was so eager to try my hand at laying a wall, at least a little. The older mason allowed me to lay one course. He was standing by and smiling at something, although his grim partner grumbled along that what I did was not proper.
My helper-partner from School 14 also grumbled all the time, however, not on the subject of masonry. His standing point of dissatisfaction was Head of the Base. Being unhappy about having such a bitch of a boss, he shirked the work which Head was allocating for 2 of us. I did not mind doing more than my partner, only it seemed not right so I was glad when he decided to quit at all…
And then the cucumber season began. They were coming in by cars pushed by a small diesel locomotive along the sideway tracks entering the Base grounds. The cars were filled with boxes of cucumbers that had to be moved to the stoves in the yard, in whose cauldrons the brine with smelly dill was boiling, and crowds of pickle barrels stood around, with their lids removed, prepared to get their load of cucumbers for pickling.
The already familiar squaw-team worked there, but they did not have time anymore for chin-wagging about "her" and "him". They cooked the pickling oozuar in the stove-embedded cauldrons under iron lids and poured it into the barrels loaded with cucumbers.
I did not aspire to become an oozuar-cook, I was satisfied with the job of a stoker feeding the stoves with the wood-waste from broken boxes and split klepkas, some of which had to be shortened by an ax. In general, it was not a conveyor job – they would call and tell when to add the fuel, and then again go and get seated someplace, and wait for the next call.
And I sat in the shadeless yard under the scorching sun way off from the stoves by which it was hellishly hotter. To while the time between calls, I practiced taking chords of a six-stringed guitar: from D-minor to A-minor, to E-major. A narrow cask stave grabbed from the pile of fuel served the guitar neck. The lady-squaws laughed from about the boiling cauldrons, "Found your missing klepka at last?"
Without paying them any attention, I took B-7th and thought of Natalie…
~ ~ ~
If you walk along the sidewalk and meet a girl with a kerchief around her neck tied not like the pioneer necktie though but with the knot moved onto her shoulder, you get it immediately that she knows what's what in the chic style. And at once you feel like coming up to ask her name, and start a talk.
But how to speak up? What to say? Who cares to get "piss off!" in answer and then feel yourself a squashed tomato?. However, it's quite another kettle of fish when you know that the stylish girl's name is Natasha Grigorenko, and you have even tried to learn ballroom waltz as her partner, under the button-accordion of Volodya Gourevitch, aka Ilyich.
"Hello, Natasha! How you doing?"
"Oh, Sehryozha! Is that you? Actually, at School 12 everyone calls me 'Natalie'."
We happened to be walking the same direction and I saw her to the corner of the street she lived in, Suvorov Street, opposite the middle driveway into Bazaar.
(…or was it she to greet me first on that sidewalk? After all, for tying the kerchief that dashy way one needs not only the grasp of fashion but being of a resolute cast as well…)
Whoever started it, but the next step was made by me. Maybe not too soon. In a week or so. Or was it even a month?. Anyway, I made that decisive step, or rather a very resolute jump.
Radya and I were riding the back steps in the Settlement streetcar, getting fanned by the strong counter wind. And when the streetcar rumbled along Bazaar, I suddenly turned my head and glanced across the road into Suvorov Street. Not that I had any reason for that, yet not far from the corner, two girls were playing badminton. Sure thing, I immediately recognized Natalie's long straight hair.
"Bye, Radya!" And I jumped off without answering his, "Where to?"
Yes, no mistake – it was she. Her partner also turned out to be my former classmate, Natasha Podragoon, who, as well as Natalie, went over to School 12 because of the Math and Physics specialization there.
Of course, I immediately fired up some yakety-yak about providing free masterclasses to share proper skills for taming their shuttlecock. And then—could you imagine!—one more chance passer-by turned over the corner. Radya obviously jumped off before the stop at our school, although he had been going to visit his Grandpa.
Natasha Podragoon went home soon, because both Radya and I talked to her so too little, if at all, on account of her being fat. Natalie invited us into her khutta's yard, where, on a table dug into the ground, lay a stack of Czech Film a Divadlo magazines. I got carried away with perusing the pictures, and Radya snapped up the conversational initiative.
But then from the neighbor garden, two missiles of dry earth lumps whooshed, though missing under. Natalie yelled at the boy she would complain to his parents, but for Radya that seemed not enough, and he ran to the garden fence to whip the snotty fool up with an elder guy's lecture. Or maybe, he wanted to show off his sporting bearing, because he, after all, had been attending the volleyball section at the Youth Sports School for two years.
Either Natalie somehow sympathized with the ten-year-old Othello of her neighbor, or Radya, despite all his training, crushed some of the potato bushes on his run, but while the jock was bullying the boy behind the fence, Natalie told me to come on Thursday because she had more of those magazines. So we started dating, me and Natalie.
Perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that she was dating me because I did not know the way of doing dating. I just came to 8, Suvorov Street, on the appointed day, greeted her mother, sat on the couch and turned the pages of another Film a Divadlo magazine. Some people know how to live! And where only could them folks manage to get such magazines from?
Then her father came home from work on his motorcycle with a sidecar. He had the same round chin as Natalie, and he gave her his permission to go out for a walk till ten, but no later than half to eleven. And we went out.
She talked a lot, yet not for just to flap her chops like many others. Natalie became my enlightener. Despite the long years of reading addiction, there was so much I did not know yet… That the coolest candies were "Grilyazh", only they were not on sale in Konotop. You had to go after those sweets to Moscow or Leningrad, and even there it's not a snap to find the treat… That the most delicious sandwich was bread and butter with layers of sliced tomato and boiled egg. And it should be rye bread, of course… And that Louis Armstrong had the hoarsest voice of all the singers in the world.
Following her lead, I borrowed a book of poems by Voznesensky from the Club library. I knew where it stood on the shelves but always bypassed because it was poetry. So that's what the real poetry meant!.
But immeasurably more than for filling my educational gaps, I needed her for the giddy thrill swoons. For example, when we were walking to the Peace Movie Theater and she allowed to hold her arm. Gee! That's impossible to describe! I felt the delicate skin of her forearm because she had a summer frock on and I held her biceps gripped tenderly. Although girls have no biceps to talk of. And because of all that I was on a full flight, I swam in thrill starting from under the bridge over Peace Avenue, past Zelenchuk Area, and almost to Peace Square. Before we reached it, she explained that it would be more correct when the girl herself holds you by the arm, and we went on walking the way she shared.
Also nice, though not quite the thing before that… And then I got hit by a ball-lightning because, walking as freshly explained and absorbed in the conversation, she half-turned to me and—O!—her tight right breast pressed lavishly to my forearm…the bliss that stops your pulse…
So, I had what to think about by the stoves in the Vegetable Base yard, while practicing chords on the missed but eventually found klepka of mine…
It's hard for those enlightened to abstain from sharing the light of truth they've seen… I attempted to bring the revelation over to my sister. We were walking along Forge Street towards Club when she said, "Come one, I'll take my brother under the pretzel!" and she took my arm.
"Listen, Kiddy," said I because we, my brother and me, and our friends, and all ours rarely called her by name but only "Kiddy", or "Red-Haired" by default. "Wanna me teach you a trick that any dude would be yours in no time?."
"O, really?" my sister said in answer, "Is that what you're talking about?" And she half-turned to me while we walked on touching her breast to my forearm.
What an arrogant innocence! Such a naive arrogance! How could I—for a split second—imagine there was something I would ever be able to learn before my younger sister? I had to apologize, and all the remaining leg to Club we laughed like mad at what a self-confident patsy I was.
But no happiness goes on forever… At one of the evening going-outs with Natalie, some dude came up to us between the Under-Overpass and Bazaar and we stopped for a talk nearby the closed already Deli 1. Or rather they talked because of being from the same school, and I just stood there like an odd lamppost.
He had a cool shirt on, I had not seen anything like that before—red and green stripes as wide as in pajamas. Not that I had ever had pajamas, but they could sometimes be seen in movies… He rhapsodized which of the Moscow universities he would enter because his uncle was a diplomat and knew everyone there. And he, the uncle, invited him to go to the Black Sea after the entrance exams by his, uncle's, Volga so that the attractive nephew would serve a bait to lime the girlies.
Then they see-youed each other and we parted, but the chat had obviously put Natalie out of humor. Already at her khutta gate, she told me that she had already been dating a guy and once late in the evening they were going on an empty bus and he looked back at the conductor in her seat by the door, and said, "Conductor is not a human," and kissed Natalie.
And then I also felt down in the dumps, because it was clear that they were kissing without conductors as well. And I thought that it was, probably, that same red-green yakker but I didn't ask questions. That evening all the way from Suvorov to Nezhyn Street I walked forever crushed by grief…
In those times to gauge a Konotoper's level of prosperity was a trivial task – you just inquired if they had a hut at the Seim river.
Upstream from the Bay Beach, about half-kilometer closer to the railway bridge, the Willow thicket on the bank was gashed by a long gully. At the end of that inlet, amid abundant growth of pliant Willows, there stood some four to five dozen huts of the Partnership "Priseimovye".
True, it called for a certain stretch of liberality to use the name of “huts” for those thrown together booths with deal-walls under the roofs of tin. They were small in size – for a couple or three iron beds on the floor of sand. No window was needed; on their arrival to relax in nature’s lap, the hut owner kept its door open all day long.
But if they were a fisherman, they would lock the door and go down to the gully, where a row of long narrow flat-bottom skiffs stood afloat, chained and padlocked to the pales in the sandy bank. Putting the tackle on the bottom of their boat, they would unlock the weighty padlock, get seated in the narrow stern and paddle with a single oar to come out of the gully to the expanse of the Seim river, and then proceed to their favorite fishing place, the spot where they kept chumming fish with caked chaff.
Having a hut was of great convenience – you could go swimming to the Bay Beach (directly two hundred meters thru the Willow thicket), come back and cook your meal on the Primus stove, blazing its blue flame on the table dug into the sand next to your hut.
Many people went to their huts by the local train on Friday evening and returned by the last one on Sunday. While having no hut on the Seim, you could go there only Saturdays and Sundays; in the morning – there, and by 17.24 or 19.07 – back to Konotop.
When Kuba arrived in the summer after his first year at the Odessa Sea School, we, sure thing, decided to rush to the Seim. Only we had to wait for the weekend because of my job at the Vegetable Base, besides, it was on weekends only that the ORS booth trucks came to the Bay Beach to sell ice-cream.
"Skully says, Grigorenchikha's become your squeeze, eh?"
"Tell Skully her name is 'Natalie'."
"Okay, whatever. Then invite her too."
Natalie agreed quite easily and we went all together: Kuba, Skully, I and Natalie. When we got off the train and were discussing where to—the Bay Beach or the Lake at the Pine grove?—Natalie suggested crossing the Seim, over there'd be not as much of a madhouse as on the Bay Beach.
On the other riverbank, there also were huts whose owners, if arrived on Friday, the next morning were meeting theirs from the Saturday train to take them over the river. One of those could ferry us just for asking… And it happened the way she predicted, probably, because it was her to ask the skiff guy for a ride.
It was an excellent day. We found a sandy glade in the Willow thicket quite close to the river, at some hundred meters from the huts. On the soft white sand, we spread the only bed cover we had, because no one except Natalie was clever enough to bring it along. When she changed into her two-piece swimsuit, she overshadowed the entire Film a Divadlo because along with her lush breasts and plum bottom there also was such a slender waist.
For bathing, we went to the small beach by the huts with the skiffs tied to the bank. Natalie preferred sitting in one of them but Kuba, Skully and I got as furious as in good old days on the Kandeebynno.
Then we ate sandwiches, drank lemonade and switched over to sunbathing. The bedspread on the sand had room only for two: for Natalie, as it was she who brought it, and for me, because it was I, who she was going out with.
She was lying on her back wearing wide black sunglasses, I stretched by her side on my stomach, being embarrassed with my trunks sticking out because of the boner. My sidekicks lay on the hot sand (also on their stomachs) fitting their imprudent heads onto the bedspread corners at our feet… And – all-embracing, sultry, tense, silence…
Of course, the next weekend only two of us went to that place… And again we lay side by side on the bedspread amid the silent heat. Mute and motionless hung the long leaves of the pliant young Willows around the oval glade, and we 2 as silent as them and the soundless sand, and the sun stilled in crouching over us from the sky.
My eyes firmly shut because I did not have sunglasses, but the sun, all the same, seeped in thru the blood-red fog of my dropped eyelids to turn into a black headache.
"A headache," heard I my voice, barely audible.
The red mist darkens, and I feel inexpressible delight from her palm put over my eyelids. Without opening my eyes, I find her wrist and silently pull her palm sliding over to my lips. I am so grateful to that tender soft palm that has driven away my pain and brought the inexpressible bliss. There is nothing better in the whole world.
But when she leaned on her elbow and hovered her face over mine and merged her lips with my lips, I found out that there still was something better, only that it had no name… 'Kiss'?. When you melt and dissolve in the font of the meeting lips, and you drown in their immensity but at the same time you soar… all that and a whole ocean of completely indescribable feelings… Just one syllable of four letters to pack up all that expanse wider than the limits of the world? Well, well… Anyway, the syllable was fairly employed by us that summer day.
And when we were already going to the huts for a skiff ride not to miss the local train, I stopped her amid the Willow trees to kiss once again. The parting kiss, we couldn't go on kissing farther than that. She answered the kiss with her tired lips and then, looking aside, said with a strange sadness, "Silly boy, you'll get cloyed with it."
I did not believe her…
(…a certain German smartie, by the name of Bismarck, once flashed with another of his witticisms, "Only fools learn from their personal experience, I prefer to use the experience of others for the purpose."
“I did not believe her…” But even from my personal experience, I should have learned that my sister Natasha, being younger than me for 2 years, surpassed my knowledge span and proved that repeatedly.
Yes, I'm anything but Bismarck with my distrust to others. A pinch of consolation though provides the fact that I am not a fool from his definition since I never get wiser even from my own experience.
What category then should I shove myself under?
Okay, let's not get distracted, the question is off the current topic…)
The cucumbers cloyed for good. Just out of habit and because of having nothing better to do, I would take one from the boxes, give it a couple reluctant bites, and hurl into the nearest thicket of tall grass in the grounds of the Vegetable Base.
To put it short, I also left the race and went to the ORS Office to quit and get the money I earned in that month and a half. For the first time in life, I held the sum of 50 rubles in my hands.
Was that enough for a scooter? Who should know? A talk with Mother turned those questions unnecessary:
"Sehryozha, school is starting. You need clothes. Shoes are needed both for you and your brother and sister. You know as well as I do how we're scratching along."
"Yes! I have clothes! And I told you why I was going to the Base."
"Those pants that I have painted two times? Is that your clothes? At your age, it's a shame to go about like that."
Mustang of my Dreams! Farewell! We won't rush along Peace Avenue, you and me, overtaking all those "Rigas" and "Desnas"…
No ready-made pants were bought for me. Instead, following Mother's instructions, I went to the sewing workshop near the Bus Station. The seamstress with a long pointed nose measured me and sewed trousers of dark gray broadcloth, synthetic Lavsan. A wide belt of two buttons. Wide-bottomed. Fifteen rubles.
Very soon the trousers came in handy, after Vladya brought the news that in the Central Park of Recreation they're fixin' to hold the Youth Song Contest. Those wishing to participate had to apply at the City Komsomol Committee. Yet, no one had the slightest chance because Arthur would take part in the Contest.
Arthur was a soldier Armenian from the construction battalion next to the RepBase, and Vladya was his fan. Being a right-handed guitarist, Arthur played it like a god in Vladya's estimation. He did not replace the strings, but just turned a common guitar the opposite way, with the bass strings going below and the thin ones up, and played it! In addition to that miraculous trick, Arthur also sang, no wonder Vladya idolized him and had no doubt that Arthur would win the contest. But we decided to participate, all the same. Together…Vladya and me.
As the Head of the Komsomol organization at School 13 and therefore familiar with the doors of offices in the City Komsomol Committee, I had to go there and apply for the contest as well as to know the exact time and location of the planned event. It turned out there remained just two days before the contest taking place at the Central Park dance-floor. We had no time to lose and started rehearsals…
Club Movie Projectionist, Boris Konstantinovich, switched on the light in the auditorium as well as two microphones on the stage. One of them we inserted into Vladya's guitar thru the soundhole and from the powerful loudspeakers installed on both sides of the stage, there roared such a cool sound that Boris Konstantinovich could not stand it and left. In his place, full of bubbling excitement, Glushcha scuttled in from Professions Street, where bypassing Club he got stopped in his tracks by the bewitching hubbub of that strident mayhem.
We decided to perform two numbers. First, the bass guitar part to "Chocolate Cream" from the LP disc of Polish rock-group The Chervony Guitary, to be followed then with the song from the soundtrack to "The Untraceable Avengers".
At the rehearsals everything went on in a pretty smooth way – the guitar with the mike in its body was turning out a classy rock'n'roll riff, after which the instrument was transformed into a common acoustic one to accompany Vladya's singing the song about so many a path in the field, yet the truth remained one and only. And I stood next to Vladya strumming my guitar…
Surprises cropped up at the Contest itself. In the concha of the dance-floor stage, there was just one microphone installed. One mike! Only one! So much for a starter. Besides, our duo needed to be named somehow… Another "oops". The Second Secretary of the City Komsomol Committee offered a choice: The Sun, or The Troubadours. Of the two evils, was chosen the shorter one.
Inserting a microphone into an acoustic guitar thru its soundhole is not an easy undertaking. You have to loosen a couple of thin strings to the utmost and shove the mike into the hole pulling them aside and then, naturally, tune the strings up. Now, with the rock'n'roll riff started, how could I possibly shout into the Vladya's guitar hole that we were The Sun duo? A nice x-rated pic, eh?
For the second number, the same crap, only in the opposite direction, to get the mike out. The full logistics of the situation dawned on us, when we were on the stage already, in front of the dense crowd bordered by the light of lamps around the dance-floor.
Vladya panicked, "To hell both them and their contest!" And I began to convince him that there was no way to turn back since we popped up there with our guitars. Or was it, like, we were just walking them around, sort of?
So he started the bass riff trying to jerk his guitar up closer to the microphone in which I announced that we were the vocal-instrumental duo The Sun. Then I lowered the microphone to his guitar for the crowd to hear clearly that it was rock’n’roll after all. Quite understandable that, holding the microphone, I could no longer support his bass part with my rhythm guitar.
With the second number, everything seemed to get in the groove. We both strummed our guitars, Vladya sang, I was looking above the heads of the crowd the way Raissa had taught us in the Children Sector. Yet, after singing one verse and the chorus, Vladya turned to me with rounded eyes and moaned, "I forgot the lyrics!"
The further, the merrier! May Chuba forgive me and may forgive me those present at the contest who filled that evening the dance-floor and the nearby park ally, but I took a step forward and yelled into the microphone that:
"Over the wide empty steppe
Raven soars in vain,
We'll be living for ages,
We are not raven's prey…"
By the next verse, Vladya snapped back and we finished the song off together, in a duo, just as promised…
Natalie and I did not go to the Seim anymore. We fell out, I did not get it though why she told me not to show up again.
Of course, I suffered painfully, and, of course, I was happy when in half-month my sister, aka Red-Haired, said, "I saw Grigirenchikha today, so she asks, 'Did Ogoltsoff go somewhere or what?' I says, 'No', and 'Why then does he not come?' says she. Have you quarreled or what?"
"We did not quarrel… Kiddy! you're the sun!"
The swimming season was already over, and we started to go out to the Plant Park where she showed me a secluded bench behind the clump of untrimmed bushes alongside the alley. I had walked that alley more than once but never knew about that bench, which stood as if embedded in the grotto of foliage.
There we were coming in the dusk when the rare yellowish lamps switched on in the alleys. The brightest, distant, bulb marked the window of the ticket office in the summer cinema projection booth. The projectionist Grisha Zaychenko, Konstantin Borisovich's partner, turned on the tape recorder and filled the dark park with the sound of cinema loudspeakers:
"The twilight shadowed the light of day.
Has the night come? I can't say…"
Then the ticket office bulb went out and the séance began. The bench in its cave of leaves got wrapped in the darkness. At that moment our talk was running out. She threw her head back leaning on my arm stretched out along the upper beam of the bench and the world ceased to exist. Especially so, if she had no brassier and was in the green dress with a meter-long zipper on its front…
But there are limits for anything and when, immersed into another dimension, my palm slid down her belly beneath the navel to touch the elastic band in her panties, her head on my shoulder moved discontentedly, and she issued a hmm as if she was about to wake, so I unquestioningly moved along to the upper treasures.
Then the séance ended. The bulb over the ticket office flashed on again. We waited while the handful of film-goers would pass behind the wall of bushes before we rose from the bench. Some dizzy inebriety… She must go… Dad told… No later than…
But all too soon the world waddled into the quagmire of the fall. It became cold, damp, wasted. The leaves fell down and the wet black branches could not hide the bench any longer. And who would care for sitting in the wet?
By inertia, we still went to the Plant Park, but it also became hostile. Once, in broad daylight, a mujik in his mid-thirties started to bully me. I had no chance against him. Fortunately, some guys from our school called him to have a drink behind the dance-floor, and in the meanwhile, we walked away.
